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Carter grabs solid St. Paul mayoral win

ELECTION 2017

Melvin Carter, a fourth generation St. Paulite, was elected mayor of St. Paul Nov. 7 with 51 percent of the vote. He is the first African-American to be elected to the city’s top position.

Carter is a former St. Paul City Council member and will replace current Mayor Chris Coleman come next year. Coleman decided not to run for reelection because he’s running for Minnesota governor in 2018.

Former St. Paul City Council member Pat Harris came in second in the mayor’s race with 25 percent of the vote. Current city council member for Ward 1, Dai Thao, came in third with 12 percent of the vote.

St. Paul used ranked-choice voting for the mayoral election, which allowed voters to rank up to six candidates.

With a competitive mayoral race made up of 10 candidates, Joe Mansky, Ramsey County Elections manager, said the unofficial voter count was 61,639 for St. Paul, the largest number of voters to turn out for municipal elections since 1993.

He said that 27 percent of eligible voters came out to vote, which was the highest percentage in a city election since 2005.

Melvin Carter

St. Paul School Board

Three St. Paul DFL-endorsed candidates were elected to the St. Paul Public School Board out of a field of five candidates.

Incumbents Jeanelle Foster and John Brodrick were re-elected and newcomer Marny Xiong won her first term. The three were also endorsed by the St. Paul Federation of Teachers.

Xiong, who lives on the East Side and serves on the Payne-Phalen Community Council board, led the race with 30 percent of the vote. She works as a school administrator at Hmong International Academy in Minneapolis.

Foster, a Dayton’s Bluff resident and Dayton’s Bluff Community Council board member, won 25 percent of the vote. Foster was elected during last year’s election to fill a vacancy on the board. This will be her first full, four-year term. She works as a parent education consultant.

Brodrick received 22 percent of the vote and will be serving his fifth term on the St. Paul Public Schools board. He is a retired St. Paul Public Schools teacher.

Jeanelle Foster

John Brodrick

Marny Xiong

Marjorie Otto can be reached at 651-748-7816 or at eastside@lillienews.com. Follow her on Twitter at @EastSideM_Otto.